Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast, where we provide one lesson every single day to help you with your most important job, being a parent.

I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from

parents just like you all over the world. Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

Why go through the whole routine? It's a timeless childhood memory, a family road trip, kids gazing out the window, spotting

something exciting, a quirky roadside attraction at Billboard promising adventure.

They ask, they plead, can we stop?

And what do parents so often say?

No.

Bill Bryson captures this whole routine in The Lost Continent, his classic book about road

tripping across America.

His father, like so many others, would resist.

It's too expensive.

It's out of the way.

You haven't behaved well enough.

And yet Bryson writes the answer almost always turned out to be yes.

I never understood why he didn't just accede to our demands at the outset, he writes,

and save himself 30 minutes of anguish.

How much of parenting is exactly this, the arguing, the criticism, the resistance?

Does it ever truly win the day?

Hardly ever.

But the residue of that negativity, of that conflict, that downerism remains. Remember those pointless fights we had

with our parents? Sometimes it feels more memorable than the actual experiences we ended up getting

...